


if your heart has become spare parts

by KiaraSayre



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Families of Choice, Gen, Hurt Stiles, Hurt/Comfort, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Pack Feels, Recovery, post-3B
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-20
Updated: 2014-02-20
Packaged: 2018-01-13 03:08:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1210417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KiaraSayre/pseuds/KiaraSayre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-3B.  Hugging, movies, shooting things, guilt-lasagna, stalking - everyone has their own way of trying to help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	if your heart has become spare parts

**Author's Note:**

> Seeing as this is post-3B and 3B hasn't ended yet, this obviously makes some assumptions that probably won't be borne out in the show. That said, spoilers through 3x19, "Letharia Vulpina," but it otherwise assumes that nobody dies. Because maybe if I write it, I can make it happen. Title from "We're On Our Way," by Radical Face. Major thanks to Ari and Desdemon for the beta!
> 
> See the end for specific content warnings.

i.

The hospital is quiet, with only the repeating, murmuring beeps of the monitors to break up the silence of Stiles's room. Scott waits outside the room while his mom goes in to check the readouts, make sure Stiles is okay, and when she comes out she nods at him.

"He'll be asleep for another few hours, and then the sedative should start wearing off," she says. "I put a copy of his new MRI results in his file in case you want to show him."

"Thanks, Mom," Scott says, and the smile she gives him is more of a formality than anything else, a halfhearted upward tug of one corner of her mouth. 

"I'm just glad everyone's okay," she says, and Scott can see her composure start to crack at the edges in the way that her shoulders sag, so he steps forward and hugs her.

She squeezes him tight. "I'm glad _you're_ okay," she admits to him, her voice quiet.

"You too," Scott says, and lets her go. "Which room is Stiles's dad in, again? In case Stiles wants to know."

"402, but he might already be released by the time Stiles wakes up. Are you sure you want to stay with him?"

Scott nods. "He'd do it for me. He _did_ do it for me, my first full moon."

His mom smiles again, but this time there's at least a hint of warmth to it. "You'll have to tell me that story later."

Scott nods, and then slips into Stiles's room. 

Even just looking at him, it's obvious that Stiles's sleep is chemically induced. From what feels like a lifetime of sleepovers, Scott knows what Stiles looks like when he's asleep - he sprawls, he snores, he drools slack-jawed into the sheets, he contorts himself into these ridiculous positions that can't possibly be comfortable. Now, Stiles is straight-limbed and still, mouth closed and face empty. He doesn't look rested. He just looks kind of dead.

Scott sighs, and sits in one of the hospital armchairs. The seat and back are upholstered, at least, even if the armrests are seriously uncomfortable metal rods. 

Then he waits.

He practices some of the exercises Derek taught him, isolating different heartbeats throughout the ward. His mother's is familiar and black-coffee-fast, like it usually is in hour 28 of a 36-hour shift. Lydia's, out in the waiting room, is slow but not sleep-slow. When Scott had left her, relying on being a nurse's son if he got caught outside of visiting hours, she had been half-asleep and playing Angry Birds on her phone, powering through each level like a geometrical terror. He can even find Sheriff Stilinski, if he concentrates, hard beats but a normal rhythm, like someone trying to keep themselves calm. Scott can't really blame him.

It could be Stiles's heart speeding up, or maybe the deeper, more deliberative breaths, but Scott knows as soon as Stiles starts to wake up. The contour of Stiles's eyes begin to move beneath the lids, his eyelashes shivering as he fights to open his eyes, and Scott moves his chair closer to the bed.

"Stiles, man, you're okay, everyone's okay," he says, keeping his voice as quiet and calm as he can.

Stiles's eyes open all the way, glassy and unfocused even as his gaze wanders in Scott's direction.

"Scott?" he says.

"Hey, yeah, it's me," says Scott. "Your dad's fine, he just couldn't be here."

Stiles blinks very, very slowly. "He's okay?"

"Yeah," Scott says. "He's just, uh, it's a funny story but kind of a long one. He's got a really minor concussion, but they want to make sure he's monitored for at least - " Scott glances at the alarm clock next to the bed - "another hour."

"Hit his head?" says Stiles. The more Stiles talks, the fuzzier his words sound, leaning into each other like staggering drunks.

Scott allows himself a small smile. "Actually, he tackled Peter like a linebacker. It was pretty great." 

Stiles squints in confusion, then looks back up at the ceiling of the hospital room like there's something that he's trying to remember. Scott can see the moment that it comes to him, the memory falling across his face.

"Nogitsune?" he whispers.

"Gone," Scott says immediately. "It's gone, Stiles, I swear. We got rid of it and it's never coming back. And - " Scott stands up and goes to the foot of the bed to get Stiles's file, so that he can pretend he doesn't see Stiles bringing his hands up to his face. "It used foxfire to mess with the MRI. I have...do you want to see the new MRI results?"

Stiles keeps his hands covering his face, so his voice comes out muffled. "I'm not…"

"Nope," says Scott. "You're not possessed, you're not dying, your dad's fine, everyone's fine. Stiles…" He comes back to his chair and drops the folder on the nightstand so he can sit down and lean forward. "You're going to be okay."

Stiles turns his head into the pillow, then curls up on his side away from Scott as his shoulders begin to shake. Scott hesitates, then leans over to cover Stiles's shoulders with his own body, as close to a hug as he can get without making Stiles get up, and holds onto him.

"You're going to be okay," he says, and repeats it over and over again. "You're going to be okay."

ii.

Lydia wouldn't have expected to bond with Sheriff Stilinski over his (literally) wayward son, but now that she has, she's not afraid to milk it. That's how she gets to go straight to Stiles's bedroom even though the only other person allowed to see him is Scott (who, admittedly, she convinced to put in a good word for her when he visited).

"He's still a little banged up," Sheriff Stilinski tells her as they climb the stairs. "And out of it - they said to expect him to sleep a lot for a while, especially with the medication he's on to help him sleep."

Lydia glances at him as he reaches the top of the stairs, considering, and then says, "Nightmares? I had them too."

The Sheriff turns around, his surprise obvious, before giving her a rueful smile. "Yeah," he says. "I guess nobody really knows what's going through Stiles's head like you do."

Lydia's smile is tight and even she can tell that it probably doesn't reach her eyes. 

The Sheriff knocks on Stiles's bedroom door. "Stiles? You've got a visitor."

After a second, Stiles's voice comes through the door, creaking with sleep. "Yeah."

The Sheriff opens the door, and Lydia takes a moment to straighten her posture, toss her hair over her shoulder, and press her lips together to check her lipstick. Then she strides through the doorway, letting her heels click against the hardwood floor.

Stiles is in his bed, which almost throws Lydia for a loop, but he sits up unsteadily when he sees who it is. "Lydia?"

"Scott could never pull off this skirt," Lydia says, and plants herself on Stiles's bed. "We're going to watch a movie. Possibly more than one." She upends her purse, and several DVDs fall out, along with a bag of chocolate-covered pretzels and low-cal cheesy popcorn. She does a quick sort of them, and then says briskly, "What do you want to watch first? Legally Blonde or 10 Things I Hate About You?"

"I'll leave you two to it," says the Sheriff, and retreats as Lydia smiles her most satisfied smile after him.

After almost a minute of silence, Lydia looks at Stiles - really looks - for the first time. There are dark circles under his eyes, even though he's supposed to be on medication, and his cheeks and chin are covered in peach fuzz that's not even trying that hard to be stubble. His hair is, quite frankly, a mess, and his eyes won't quite focus as he stares at her as though not entirely convinced that she's there.

So Lydia does what she always does in times of trouble: she Lydias so hard that the only option for anyone in her path is to surrender or flee. "I can choose if you don't want to," she says. 

"What are you doing?" Stiles says.

"To be determined," says Lydia, "but either way I'm definitely watching a movie."

"No, what - why aren't you at school?"

Lydia freezes her expression so that she doesn't look concerned. "Because it's Saturday."

Stiles blinks slowly. "Already?"

"Only seven days after the last one," Lydia says. "Funny how that works."

Stiles's gaze wanders from Lydia down to the DVDs, and Lydia notices that his breathing picks up. His Adam's apple jumps as he swallows hard, and then says, "I'm not really in the mood for a movie."

This, at least, Lydia's prepared for. "Too bad. I also brought the Breakfast Club and Dirty Dancing if you're feeling more 80s than 90s."

"I'm really not feeling anything. I'm actually pretty tired, so - "

"Fine. You sleep, I'll just watch on your computer."

Stiles still hasn't narrowed his eyes, or moved his eyebrows, or gesticulated at all in this conversation. He's just sitting there like all of his fight's been used up. "That's not what I meant."

"Too bad," Lydia repeats.

Stiles lets out a breath without enough force to really be considered a sigh. "Fine." He hunkers down on his bed and lies down again, with his back to Lydia.

Lydia purses her lips, but refuses to be deterred. She starts humming the song from the Breakfast Club under her breath as she looks through the DVDs, and when Stiles pulls a pillow over his head, begins singing under her breath.

It takes two bars of "As you walk on by, will you call my name?" before he cracks and sits up again in a fluid and sudden movement, clutching the pillow that had previously been over his head to his stomach.

"Why are you even here?" he demands. 

Lydia rolls her eyes. "To watch a - "

"Don't give me that crap - I didn't invite you."

"Then tell me to leave," Lydia says, and Stiles recoils slightly. "If you want me to, I'll go. But you've said you didn't invite me, you've said you don't want to watch a movie, but you haven't actually said you don't want me here."

He looks angry, now, his eyes narrowed and his lips tight - it's more animated than she's seen him since this whole thing began. More importantly, he looks like he might actually listen.

"I'm here," she says, turning to face him more fully and enunciating each word so he doesn't miss any of it, as though it's the most obvious thing in the world, "because these are the only movies that the hospital had after Derek's creepy uncle tried to rip out my throat with his teeth. You're not in the hospital anymore so I can't sit outside your room, it's not your birthday so I can't single-handedly make your party happen, you're _definitely_ not going to win a Fields Medal, and there aren't any bear traps here for me to disarm, but what I can do is sit here with you and watch a movie."

Stiles meets her eyes, and his gaze is clearer than when she walked in. "That's...the most aggressively touching thing anyone's ever said to me."

"You're damn right." He's engaged enough now that Lydia feels comfortable truly devoting her attention to the DVDs, running her fingers over the titles, since she figures he might want a little bit of space. 

She's proven right when, after a few seconds, he says, tired and quiet, "I'm not sure I'm awake right now."

Her fingers go still on the DVD covers. He keeps talking.

"I keep thinking that any second now I'm going to wake up again and it'll still be - it'll still be the nogitsune and the oni and I'll have done something terrible." After a moment, he admits, his voice cracking, "I don't know if I'll ever be sure I'm awake again."

Lydia takes a breath. Her voice goes quieter, more gentle, as she says, "There's nothing I can say, or that anyone can say, that will convince you that you're awake, that what you're seeing and experiencing is real. But you're going to keep waking up just once for each time you fall asleep, and you'll just...start believing it, eventually."

"How did you know? After Peter and the whole banshee thing and - and everything, how do you know what's real?"

Lydia presses her lips together in exaggerated thought. "I read a lot of Descartes," she says.

"You're kidding," says Stiles flatly.

"I'm really not," Lydia says. "I mean, his whole thing is 'how do I know that demons aren't tricking all my senses?' It was relevant."

"How did that _help_?"

"Because he's a terrible writer and a bore," Lydia says. "Once I got sick of reading Descartes, I was sick of thinking about Descartes, and it got a lot easier to say 'screw the demons that may or may not be tricking my senses, I have homework to do.'" 

She glances at Stiles: he's got his legs curled up to his chest, hunched over and hugging them with his chin resting on his knees. He meets her eyes, just for a second, then looks back down at his comforter. 

The guilt rises in the back of her throat again like bile, and she pushes it down. "You beat it by waiting it out," she says. "It's gonna take a while, but luckily for you, you're surrounded by generous, patient, beautiful people who are willing to wait it out with you."

Stiles scrubs his face with one hand, and Lydia pretends not to notice that it comes away damp.

"So," she says. "I'm thinking the Breakfast Club."

iii.

It seemed like a good idea to Allison at the time, especially since Scott had mentioned Stiles was starting to get a bit of cabin fever, but when she's standing at Stiles's door it seems really, really dumb. She rings the bell with her left hand, awkwardly navigating it without putting the folder she's holding down, before she has a chance to second-guess herself all the way back to her car.

It takes a minute for Stiles to open it, and when he does, he looks...there's not really a good word that encompasses "tired," "wrecked," and "broken." Also "drugged." Scott had mentioned that they were giving him something to help him sleep, but based on the sunken hollows under his eyes, it's not enough.

"Hi," Allison says. "Uh. I thought - you weren't at school, so I thought I'd bring you your homework. In case you wanted something to do. If you're bored." She holds up the folder in her left hand.

Stiles stares at her, then looks down at the bow case in her right hand.

"This is...also if you're bored," says Allison, hoisting it up slightly. "I thought you might want to learn how to shoot."

"Why…?" says Stiles, and then stalls out in sheer disbelief.

"Shooting things always makes me feel better," Allison says. "Dad says it's how he knows I'm really an Argent."

There's another moment of staring, and then Stiles steps aside. "Come on in."

Allison comes on in.

Stiles closes the door after her, but Allison can't help but look around. The Stilinski residence is surprisingly nondescript after the chaos of the past few weeks. It's tidy, with no signs of dust or casefiles or recent demonic possession. There's a photo above the mantle of a younger Sheriff and very young - no more than ten years old - Stiles, with a smiling woman.

Allison doesn't ask about the picture.

"Much as I appreciate the offer," says Stiles, and in the longer sentences Allison can hear it, too - a slight slurring of the words, as though he can't quite get the syllables crisp - "I don't think it's such a good idea for me to be armed with a deadly weapon right about now. I dunno if Scott mentioned, but apparently extended periods of sleep deprivation plus god-awful raging nightmares equals a prescription for sedatives."

"Is it working? I mean, are you sleeping?" Allison asks.

Stiles steps past her and heads towards the kitchen. Over his shoulder he says, "According to the doctors, and by doctors I mean Scott's mom, I've still got a ways to go before I've made up for my sleep debt."

Allison follows him, because she's not sure what else to do.

"So me with a bow, probably not great. I pretty much stand no chance of hitting a target at the moment."

"The point isn't to hit the target," Allison says. "The point is...it was a dumb idea."

Stiles looks at her, like he can hear the hesitation in her tone. "What was?"

Allison throws her hair over one shoulder, trying to hide her nerves. "I just thought...that was something the nogitsune never did. I thought doing something entirely new might help. And after my mom died, I did a lot of shooting. It's not as easy as it looks - it takes a lot of concentration, and when I was doing that, I couldn't be thinking about anything else." After a moment she adds, "And I had already trashed my room, so there weren't a lot of other things I could destroy."

Stiles watches her levelly, then blinks, slow but not chemically-induced. "Okay," he says.

"What?"

"I said okay. I want to try it."

Stiles leads her out into the backyard, taking them through the kitchen. The lid on the trash can isn't entirely closed - in the gap, Allison can see the the bin is overfilled with masses of paper, yarn, and thumbtacks. She wonders if Stiles is doing this because he, too, already trashed his room.

She has the paper target tucked into the bow case, and she sets it up against the fence while Stiles mills awkwardly at the other end of the yard.

"This is legal, right? I mean, bows and arrows are technically deadly weapons…"

"This is private property, and bows and arrows aren't firearms," Allison says, driving the thumbtack into the target. She stands back and examines her work, then crosses over to join Stiles again. "We're fine. Besides, I'm kind of banking on your dad going easy on you for a while. Think you can get us some beer?"

That gets a smile from Stiles, albeit a crooked, halfhearted one. He ducks his head. "Sorry to disappoint you and Isaac, but you should know that werewolves can't get drunk."

Allison tries not to grin. "And how do you know that?"

"As Scott's best friend, I had to take it upon myself to at least try with him after you two broke up. The first time. The second time he was weirdly zen about it all, and now there's Kira, so…"

The smile fades rapidly off Stiles's face at the mention of Kira, so Allison pulls the bow out of the case. She picked the most ridiculously high-tech bow she had for this, partly because it's counterintuitively easier for beginners and partly to try to get a laugh out of him. The latter seems to work, at least.

"Holy Legolas, Hawkeye," Stiles says, staring. "How many bows is that?"

"Just one," Allison says, checking to see if the scope is still secured. "Something like this is easier to draw and aim. I thought it would be a good starting place."

"So we're not going full-on Katniss?" says Stiles.

Allison looks away from the bow to meet his eyes with a raised eyebrow. "How many of those references do you have?"

"This is my last one, Merida," he says. "Okay, now I'm done."

Allison hides her smile by turning back to the bow, and the conversation dies again. The silence hangs between them as Allison checks the pulley cams on the bow, trying to think of something to say.

Eventually she breaks. "I'm sorry. This was a bad idea."

"No, it's…" says Stiles, but even he can't finish the denial.

"It is. It's weird," Allison says.

"It's a little weird."

"I just thought - "

"It's just - we're not…" Stiles trails off, gesturing between them with a vague motion.

"Not what?" Allison says.

"Not exactly friends," Stiles finishes. "I mean, you dated Scott, and you're kind of weirdly part of the pack, I guess, but you and I never really talk or anything."

Allison holds the bow a bit closer to her, because he's right, but when he puts it like that he makes it sound - not wrong, but incomplete. "We all opened that door together, with the Nemeton," she says slowly. "It could've been any of us that the nogitsune went for. It was just dumb luck that it was you. Maybe we don't talk, but maybe we could. Either way, we're kind of in it together now, whether we like it or not."

Stiles looks down at the grass and doesn't say anything for a long moment. Then he clears his throat and reaches one hand out for the bow. Allison hands it to him, and it wobbles around the fulcrum of his hand as he gets a sense of its balance.

"Okay," he says, "so. Bow and arrows. The sharp end goes that way, right?"

iv.

Kira's reasoning goes like this:

  1. Everyone likes lasagna.
  2. Stiles and his dad probably don't have a lot of time to cook right now.
  3. Her mom tried to straight-up murder Stiles and that probably needs an apology.
  4. Therefore: lasagna.



Scott had approved, telling her that the fastest way to Stiles's dad's heart was through his stomach and the fastest way into Stiles's heart would be to hide vegetables in it and use low-fat cheese. She had framed it to her dad as a way to show community support for the family of a student currently undergoing a volatile medical crisis, but he had hemmed and hawed about it being inappropriate. She had even tried pointing out that the entire family had been pretty instrumental in his attempted murder, which also hadn’t worked. Then she had played the 'Stiles is my friend' card, and he'd had his apron on before she'd even finished talking. Her mom, drinking an after-dinner espresso in the dining room, had caught her eye and given an approving nod, which Kira took to mean that she could actually call it a sorry-my-mom-tried-to-murder-you cake.

She brings the lasagna to Stiles's house just as the sun is beginning to set, and, lasagna tucked under one arm and against her hip, rings the doorbell.

She doesn't expect Stiles's dad to be the one to answer.

"Hi!" she says, taken aback. "Sheriff! I - sorry, I didn't really expect you, which is stupid because you live here too. Oh!" she says, seeing his frown of confusion, "I'm Kira Yukimura - you know, the - "

"I know who you are, Kira," the Sheriff says, and when he steps out onto the stoop, Kira has to take a corresponding step backwards to make room as he closes the door behind him. "I'm just a little confused about what you're doing here…"

"Oh!" she says, and maneuvers the lasagna from under her arm to in front of her. "I thought that maybe you guys wanted food. Not because - I mean, I'm sure you can cook, but you shouldn't have to. It's been pretty crazy for everyone, and my dad makes lasagna, so…"

The Sheriff's frown eases. "That's...very thoughtful. Thank you."

"Thank my dad," says Kira, shrugging. "He's the one who - "

"Dad?"

The door opens as the Sheriff turns around, and Stiles pokes his head out.

"Hey, Stiles, I'll be back inside in a second - Kira and her family were kind enough to bring some food for us."

"That's cool," says Stiles, poking his head out further to look. "Is it sushi?"

Kira winces. "Scott told you about that?"

The Sheriff looks between her and Stiles and says, "I think Kira was just leaving - "

"No, come on, how's that fair? You made it, and you don't even get any of it?" Stiles looks beseechingly first at his dad, and then at Kira.

"My shift starts in ten minutes," the Sheriff says.

"So go, and Kira and I will have sushi - "

"Lasagna," Kira supplies.

" - Kira and I will have lasagna and there'll be leftovers for, like, holy crap for like forever. How much lasagna is that?"

Kira ducks her head to hide a grin. "A lot," she says.

"There we go," says Stiles, and gives his dad a smile that looks, even to Kira's untrained eye, both fake and slightly desperate. "Everyone wins."

The Sheriff looks from Kira to Stiles and back again, then sighs. "Fine. Stiles, I'll be back in the morning, and if anything happens, anything at all - "

"There are like twenty werewolves watching this house at all times, Dad. It'll be fine." Stiles opens the door far enough to reach past the Sheriff and grab Kira's wrist. "We'll be fine. Have fun at work! Don't do anything I wouldn't do!"

Then he pulls Kira inside and shuts the door.

"Oh my god," he says, leaning his head against the door. "Kira. Thank you. My dad's been off work for the past _four days_ and I can't begin to tell you how crazy overprotective he's being with me cooped up in here."

Kira tries not to look too visibly like a deer in the headlights. "Um. I thought you were getting rest?"

"Oh, I'm getting rest," he says. "I'm getting so much rest that they sent me home from the hospital with informational pamphlets about back problems and bed sores. Bed sores! Yesterday I found myself missing _Finstock_!" He turns around and holds out his hands as though strangling an invisible neck for emphasis. "Did you know that NASA pays people money to stay in bed for six months? Seriously, they can do whatever they want, as long as they stay lying down in bed for six months, and most of the volunteers end up quitting because it's just that boring." He finally seems to register Kira's presence. "Oh, hey, lasagna."

Kira frowns. "Do I smell coffee?"

"Yeah, I just made a fresh pot. Why, do you want some?"

Kira does a quick up-and-down look of Stiles - his hair looks as though it was the recent victim of a minor tornado, his eyes are the kind of bright that Kira only ever saw in the crowd in her old school that was known for its straight-As and caffeine pill breakdowns, and while his skin isn't nearly the shade of zombie-gray Scott had warned her to expect, it's definitely more sallow than healthy.

"I think I'm good," says Kira. "Should you be drinking coffee? Doesn't it interact with - " Kira stops as she realizes that maybe she wasn't supposed to know about the sleeping pills.

"I'm not on any medication anymore, except the Adderall, but that wasn't - wasn't what you were asking. Apparently sleeping pills can get addictive, like, neurologically, so." He makes a quick scissor-cuts-paper gesture with one hand. "They cut me off."

"Oh. Um. Are you...coming back to school soon?"

Stiles runs a hand through his hair, his energy bleeding off like someone poured a bucket of cold water on him. "Next week, hopefully," he says, less animated. "The doctor at the hospital wants to make absolutely sure that his diagnosis issue was a mechanical problem and not, you know, my brain, so I have to go back in for some more tests this weekend. Between that and going for weeks, plural, with severe sleep deprivation…"

Kira tries to think of something reassuring to say. Or anything to say, really.

"I got my dad to make you lasagna to apologize for my mom trying to murder you," she says, and immediately closes her eyes with regret.

When she opens them again, Stiles has his eyebrows raised and looks like he's almost smiling. "Kira, you live in Beacon Hills now. If we gave each other entire meals every time one of our parents tried to murder one of us, we'd be drowning in casseroles."

"...what?" Kira says.

Stiles pushes himself off the door. "Let me tell you a story. Or five. And I was serious about the lasagna - do you want some?"

"Sure," Kira says, because she's had her dad's lasagna before and knows better than to pass it up.

"You know, Scott used to have this whole crazy-epic love story going on," Stiles says as he leads Kira through to the kitchen. "It was star-crossed, everything, the whole shebang. There were lies, there was deception, werewolves and hunters and homicidal family members on both sides - well, okay, on Allison's side."

Kira realizes that she's making a face, and tries to rearrange her features to look a little bit less incredulous. "Scott and Allison were star-crossed lovers?" 

"Oh, yeah," says Stiles, crossing over to a cabinet. He continues as he rummages through the plates. "She didn't know anything about werewolves or hunters or anything when she got here. Her aunt was a little bit homicidal. So was her grandfather, actually. Well, is. Technically he's still alive."

"Technically?" Kira says faintly.

"Scott really hasn't explained any of this?" Stiles seems to be getting into the explanation - he's more animated, gesturing with the plates before putting them down with rattling ceramic clinks. "Man, someone's got to explain all of this to you."

He pulls out some forks and they clatter as he puts them on the plates. Kira watches him - watches the forks as they hit the plates, and her heart sinks.

"I should probably go," she says quietly.

"What?" says Stiles, looking genuinely confused. "No, why?"

Kira says, "Your hands are shaking."

Stiles looks down at his hands, held over the plates, and watches the tremors pass through them. Then he tucks them to his sides as he folds his arms. 

"Sorry," he mutters.

"No, it's my fault," Kira says. "I should've known that my being here would be - "

"Look, don't - don't go, please?" Stiles rolls his shoulders forward, hunching them even more as he looks for the words. "I'm...to be honest, I'm pretty sick of being scared all the time, so I've decided that I'm just going to ignore it for a while and call it immersion therapy. And I can't exactly avoid you forever, and I don't - I don't want to. I don't want to be scared of you. I just want to be normal again."

Kira nods slowly. "So me staying and eating guilt-lasagna with you would be normal?"

"My baseline is my best friend is a werewolf, the captain of the lacrosse team turning into a homicidal lizard, and the girl I idolized since I was six being a banshee, so by comparison, yes. Guilt-lasagna is totally normal."

Kira realizes that she's smiling, and licks her lips to try to stop. "I can't really imagine Scott and Allison being together," she admits, happy to change the subject.

The tension in Stiles's posture melts away, and he goes back to searching the kitchen. "Well, she used to be different - she smiled more, for one thing, but her mom died and she went through some stuff." He finally finds what he was looking for - a spatula.

"What happened to her mom?"

It's almost disturbing how nonchalant Stiles is as he says, "Well, she tried to murder Scott and Derek stopped her, but she got bit and was going to turn into a werewolf - "

"Wait, so werewolves like Derek, ones who aren't Alphas, they can turn people too?"

"No, Derek was an Alpha at the time, but he gave it up to save his sister Cora when she was sick."

Kira's eyes widen in despair. "Derek has a sister? I thought there was a fire…"

Stiles looks down at the lasagna, then back at Kira. "You know, I have a chessboard upstairs that could really help explain everything…"

Something Stiles said earlier in the conversation catches up with her, and as Kira follows Stiles upstairs, she says, "Wait, did you say 'homicidal lizard'?"

v.

Derek can hear Stiles's breathing and heartbeat before Stiles even leaves his house. The Sheriff has to work, so it's only Stiles inside, and even from his car - parked a respectful and halfheartedly-sneaky half a block back from the house - Derek can get a read on it.

His pulse isn't too rapid, but he's taking long, deep breaths, probably to manage it. At least he's managing it, though.

Derek waits.

Stiles comes out eventually, backpack slung over one shoulder. Derek makes a mental note to tell him that it'll mess with his posture, once Stiles is feeling better enough that he might have a snappy comeback. Even Derek knows to draw the line between banter and bullying, early threats to rip out Stiles's throat notwithstanding.

Stiles opens the door to his Jeep, throws the backpack in first, and then climbs in. From here, Derek can see through Stiles's window, if he looks in his driver's-side mirror. Stiles puts the key in the ignition and then lets his hands fall to his sides and his head against the headrest. His breathing is still deep and controlled, but it's shakier now, and his heart rate's picked up. 

Derek keeps waiting.

Stiles takes one last breath and turns the key. The Jeep's engine rumbles to life, and Stiles moves his hands to the steering wheel. Even from his car, Derek can see Stiles's knuckles begin to turn white, the skin straining above the bone. The unevenness in Stiles's breath resolves into Lamaze breathing, and then Stiles shakes his head and gives voice to his breath, as though trying to shake out the nerves. 

"Okay," he tells himself. "Okay, come on, Stiles. Okay."

Then he puts the Jeep into reverse and eases it to the bottom of the driveway. Derek's hand goes to the key of his own car, but he hesitates - maybe it's best to wait until Stiles has a decent lead, so he doesn't know he's being followed.

"Son of a…" Stiles mutters, and Derek looks back in his mirror.

Stiles has spotted him.

Stiles is staring at him.

The increase in Stiles's heart rate this time has nothing to do with fear.

Stiles leans across the Jeep to manually roll the window down, and then yells out it, "Dude, what the hell!"

Derek ignores him, or at least pretends to.

"Seriously, _what the hell_?" Stiles yells again. "Are you stalking me?"

Derek rolls down his own window - his _power_ window, thank you very much - and leans far enough out it that Stiles can see his exaggerated and utterly unrepentant shrug.

"Are you _babysitting_ me?" This time Stiles's voice goes shrill with a mixture of incredulity and offense. Derek grins, but rolls his window back up.

"You've got to be effing kidding me," he hears Stiles mutter, and debates whether to remind Stiles that he has werewolf hearing and has actually heard everything. That probably wouldn't be productive, but maybe Stiles would rather be annoyed than in whatever emotional limbo he's been in for the past week.

"Fine," Stiles mutters to himself. " _Fine_. Goddamn werewolves with their...werewolfiness…"

In the mirror, Derek sees the passenger's side door of the Jeep pop open.

"Come on if you're coming!" Stiles yells.

Derek makes sure to go over to the Jeep at a leisurely pace, and carefully moves Stiles's backpack to the footwell before getting in.

"You need a bigger car," he tells Stiles. "And power windows."

"I need to not have a werewolf babysitter, is what I need," Stiles says. "Were you really going to follow me to school?"

Derek turns to look at Stiles, using the blank face he reserves for when someone (usually Stiles) has asked him a question they already know the answer to.

"I don't need anyone following me!" says Stiles. "And even if I did, why _you_ , why not, like, Scott or someone?"

"For one thing, I don't actually go to your school, so if anything did happen or if you wanted to turn around, I'm not missing anything," says Derek. "Also, we thought you might not recognize my car."

"It's a conspiracy. Of _course_ it's a conspiracy," Stiles says, then blinks. "And what are you talking about, your car is hella ostentatious."

"Good to see you've been studying vocabulary," Derek says before he can stop himself.

"Yeah, well," says Stiles, with nothing more than typical irritation, "I've had some time on my hands." He puts a hand on the back of Derek's seat to turn himself to finish backing out of the driveway, then stares at Derek instead. "You do know that not even my dad is following me to school, right? That's the level of overprotective you're at right now."

"You're assuming he's not in on it," Derek tells him. 

"Oh, great, so now my dad's in on the werewolf conspiracies too. That's just what I needed." 

"Yes. Shockingly, people who know you occasionally talk to each other."

Stiles rolls his eyes, but finishes backing out of the driveway. As he shifts the Jeep out of reverse, Derek watches his hand - he grips the gear stick too tightly, as though he's trying to hide that his hands are shaking. 

They're both quiet for the rest of the drive to the school, and Stiles neatly pulls into an unobtrusive parking spot near the back of the lot without any hesitation. It's only after he's put the car in park, when the trembling in his hands shakes the keys on the key ring as he goes to turn off the ignition, that he shows any external signs of nerves. Derek, who's been listening to his heartbeat the whole ride, isn't surprised - no matter how much Stiles controls his breathing, he can't control his heartbeat.

Stiles snatches his hand away from his keys. "Okay, we're here, you can go away now."

Derek looks at him sideways. "Do you want me to?"

Stiles gives a half-hysterical and entirely humorless laugh. "I want none of this to have ever happened, so obviously what I want has very little to do with what's gonna happen." He puts his hands on the lower edge of the steering wheel, rubbing one thumb against the surface. Derek stays quiet until Stiles breaks the silence again. "So everyone here, they all got, what, the lacrosse-induced brain swelling story?"

"Same as everyone else," Derek says.

Stiles takes a deep breath, and then another.

"If you don't want to - " Derek begins.

"I'm gonna have to eventually," says Stiles. "Unless I change schools, or move, or the Earth opens up and finally swallows me whole."

Derek thinks about himself and Laura in New York, living around the empty places where their family and their pack used to be. "Might not help even then," he says.

Stiles inhales, long but shuddery, then exhales more smoothly. "Fine. I'm fine. I'm totally fine."

"I'm not the one you should be convincing," Derek says, and Stiles nods at the steering wheel.

"Right. Right, yeah. Yeah." He takes one last breath, and turns the car off and pulls the key out in one swift motion. "I'll knock 'em dead, but, you know, figuratively. No fatal mayhem this time."

"Good goal," says Derek.

"Oh god. Okay," says Stiles. He opens his door and steps out of the car, and Derek hands him his backpack. Stiles slings it on, squares his shoulders, and then looks at Derek. "Are you planning to sit there all day?"

Derek reaches into the inside pocket of his leather jacket and pulls out a paperback. "Basically."

Stiles stares at the paperback, and then at Derek, and then back at the paperback. "I can't - you know what, fine. Sure. Whatever. Totally getting back to normal here."

He slams the driver's side door closed, and mutters under his breath about werewolf conspiracies all the way to the entrance to the schools.

Derek allows himself a small smile, and settles in to read with Stiles's heart beating a background rhythm in the distance.

vi.

Stiles tells himself this is just like when his mom died. People will stare at him and pity him and convey their sympathies in awkward, stilted, teenaged attempts until he's back long enough that it gets boring again, and then they'll start gossipping about something else and it'll be fine. He tells himself that these first couple days are going to be the hardest, and they're just going to suck, and that's okay.

So people turn to look at him in the hallways and whisper to each other as he passes and move out of his way like they're making room for how messed-up he is, and he pretends he can ignore it. The lock on his locker has the right numbers, his textbooks are all written in the right letters and the right language, and when he does a quick, surreptitious count of his fingers, hidden in the lee of his locker door, he gets the right number. He doesn't wait for Scott at his locker, the same way he didn't call Scott to offer him a ride this morning, because he's fine, he's _fine_ , and he doesn't need a werewolf babysitter. He can do this, because he's fine.

He's one of the first people to get to Coach's classroom, and the two other people in the room go quiet when he comes in. He ignores them, because he can ignore them just fine, and goes to his usual desk.

A shadow falls over his desk, and he looks up to see Coach holding a sheaf of papers, which is when Stiles realizes that he has done absolutely none of his makeup homework and might be slightly massively screwed.

"Coach - " he says.

"Stilinski," Coach says, "I'm a little worried. I'm a little worried because all of your makeup work was turned in with different handwritings, which seem scarily identical to your friends' handwritings."

"Uh," says Stiles.

"This worries me because your forgery skills are both intimidating and impressive," Coach says, and puts the papers down on Stiles's desk. The assignment on top has an 'A' written on it. "Because I'm sure that's what you were doing, while you were home and recovering and bored and wanted a challenge. Isn't that right, Stilinski?"

"Uh," Stiles says again. "Yeah?"

"Good," says Coach. He turns to go back to the front of the classroom, and hesitates. "You've got good friends, Stilinski. And welcome back."

Stiles looks down at his desk, and it does nothing to ease the sudden tightness in his throat. He sniffs loudly and rubs his nose.

"Man, forgot how dusty this school is," he says quietly, to nobody in particular.

"Stiles!" Scott comes into the classroom and makes a beeline for the desk next to Stiles. "I tried to catch you at your locker."

"Yeah, I - I came straight here," Stiles says. "You know, wanted to make sure I got a good seat, and...stuff." He glances back down at the papers on his desk - the top assignment is written in Scott's handwriting. He slides it across the desk so that it's closer to Scott, and says, "Hey, man, I just...thanks."

Scott shrugs. "We got your back. You know that, right?"

"Yeah," Stiles says. "Yeah, I know."

"Why do you always sit on the window side of the room?" 

Stiles turns around to see Lydia settling into the desk behind him, blinking at the sunlight coming through the window. 

"How can you even see anything over here?" she continues.

"At least it's warm," says Allison, and Stiles turns to his other side to see Allison sitting next to him. "It's the coldest fall in Beacon Hills history. You'd think they'd turn the heat up."

Stiles at least recognizes that Kira's sitting in front of him before she joins the conversation. "The school board wants to be more green, and until they get the state funding for energy-efficient windows, this is the best they can do."

"Ugh, so all teachers talk about the most boring school gossip at home? I thought it was just my mom," Lydia says.

Stiles lets himself relax into his seat, surrounded by conversation, and takes a steadying breath. When he looks over at Scott, Scott's watching him with his worried-puppy-dog face.

"You gonna be okay, man?" he says, soft enough that the rest of the noise in the room drowns it out.

"I think...I think I'm getting there," Stiles says, and lets the conversation around him drown out the quiet.

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Contains PTSD, references to loss of agency/will, canonical levels of doubting reality, and basically the canonical levels of messed-up that came with the Nogitsune plotline as a whole. Also contains references to Peter's manipulations of Lydia, in case that's a trigger.


End file.
